


Little deaths, old habits, and absolutely no pity.

by deathorthetoypiano



Series: Pretending [3]
Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 06:03:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathorthetoypiano/pseuds/deathorthetoypiano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie's doctors told him that he absolutely must not smoke during his recovery, but having Lix stretched out on his bed, smoking away, was simply too much temptation for him to resist in his fragile state..</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little deaths, old habits, and absolutely no pity.

**Author's Note:**

> I missed writing these two, so I thought I'd add to my series. And it turned into a bit of smut... though I couldn't do it without a bit of angst as well, and some cute. The thought of Lix tickling Freddie simply wouldn't go away...

“Stop it, will you,” he complained, reaching for the cigarettes. Lix laughed, breathing smoke across his cheek and stretching her arm out, twitching the packet just out of his reach so that he tumbled on top of her, jolting his body a little so that he tensed briefly before relaxing again. He did not move immediately, but lay there, panting, recovering from the unexpected strain, looking into her eyes with an expression that she suspected she could read. Ever since they had been spending so much time together - Lix had stopped sleeping in her office, started sleeping on the sofa here instead, desperate to keep an eye on him - they had had increasingly numerous encounters like this, coming too close, looking hard at one another, then running away in fear. So far, it had been easier to deny themselves than to take the plunge. But the look on his face was a little different, and she wondered if things were about to change.

Lix stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray without so much as glancing away from him. “Freddie, darling, you know the doctors won’t let you,” she whispered, running her fingertips up the arm that supported him, daring him to stop her, over his shoulder blade, tangling them in his hair. Her belly seemed to squirm constantly when she was with him, but the feeling intensified as he bit his lip, so tantalisingly close. She scraped her nails lightly over the nape of his neck, and watched him shiver before he tucked his head against her shoulder. “Up to you, beautiful boy,” she purred, arching ever so slightly, her hips pressing up against his, her thigh sliding along his, just a little. She knew it was manipulative, and probably unfair, but she had no desire to pressure him, only to give him the opportunity to choose, when so little in his life recently had been a choice.

She was beginning to wonder if he had fallen asleep when he lifted his head and fixed her with a searching gaze. “I don’t want your pity,” he told her, so earnestly that it broke her heart a little that he was so insecure, that he thought she would do a thing like that. She almost wanted to laugh, wanted to gesture to her own body, her scars, her instability and insecurity, her addictions, the things she had done, and point out that if anyone deserved pity, it was her. She wanted to tell him that he was too good for her, that she did not deserve him, that she did not deserve anyone after what she had done. But that was far from what he was asking, far from what this moment needed. He needed to feel wanted, to feel human again after the horror, to feel like the Freddie who had run off into the night to do what was right, the man that people had loved, not this shadow, this sunken creature who barely left these four walls. 

“Have you ever known me to pity anyone?” she asked finally, scraping her nails against his neck again, as he seemed to like that. She watched him think about it. “I learnt a long time ago that pity is foolish, and unconstructive. It isn’t my style, beautiful boy. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be, you do know that, don’t you?” As if to illustrate the point, she pressed a kiss to his jaw, the only part of him she could reach without moving too much, and pretended not to notice the smear her lipstick left there.

Freddie grinned. “Here, in my flat, or here?” he asked with a wriggle of his hips, looking so pleased with himself that the only answer she could give was to surge up beneath him and kiss him, kiss him like she would have before, if they had been sober, if they had been in less of a hurry, been somewhere less public, if things had been different. She felt him sigh into her, his whole body relaxing against hers as she tugged his lower lip between her teeth, arched into his chest, pressed her leg along his. She moaned into his mouth as his hand slid up her thigh, wished for once that she wore dresses, that he could really touch her without either of them having to move. Already, it was so different from before. She let him really lead, rather than merely letting him think he was leading, let him touch her without trying to hurry him along, even let him pin her hands above her head. “You get more glorious each day,” he observed, pressing kisses to her collarbone, undoing the buttons of her blouse and following his fingers downwards, teeth rasping over her skin so deliciously that she fell back against the pillow with an uncharacteristic sigh. He shifted, lifting his body away from hers, and she sighed at the loss until she felt his fingers at her belly, undoing her trousers, and there was nothing she could do to hold in the gasp as his knuckles brushed against bare skin, helping her to wriggle free. Before, they had gone from laughing as they kissed, crashing into walls, to silent, desperate, regretful fucking, but now they laughed and smiled and peppered each other with kisses and gentle caresses. At one point, he stopped, breathing hard, and she looked up, concerned, from where she was busily undoing his belt, only for him to kiss her, hard, pinning her down again as he kicked free from his trousers, laughing into her mouth and delighting in having tricked her. She tickled him, and he rolled off her onto his back, squealing like a child for her to stop.

So she did. Rocking back on her heels, she looked down her nose at him, one eyebrow arched in a mocking expression that he knew so well. “Stop?” she asked softly, with a hint of seriousness, just in case, but she had barely said it before he, too, was sitting up, and brushing her hair out of her eyes.

“God, no,” he growled, kissing her shoulder, and she was reminded unavoidably of Randall. She pushed him from her mind, he had no business here, though the pang in her heart was less easy to forget. “Wait there.” She did as she was told, unusual though it was, watching as he crossed the room, walking more steadily than she had seen him since before, and flicked the light switch. “I want to see you,” he told her, “and it’s too dark.” He knelt before her again, and slid her blouse off her shoulders, kissing down her arms to her hands, into her palms and along her fingers. She watched him with interest, until he looked up at her. “You have such beautiful hands,” he explained, pressing a kiss to the tip of each.

“Well now,” she considered, leaning back on her free hand and continuing to watch him, “I always thought they were rather ugly,” she paused to grin at the horrified expression on his face, “but I suppose you see me differently.” He watched her intently for a moment, then reached to kiss her, putting so much feeling into it, clearly trying to prove that he saw her differently, that she felt almost tearful. That this should have happened to him was a tragedy, and she hated herself for profiting from it, for building their friendship into something more than it had been before, even as she told herself that nobody else would have done it. She was sick of pretending that she was helping him only out of the goodness of her heart.

“Lix,” he murmured, nudging her chin with a knuckle, bringing her back to the present. “Come here.” He eased her down onto her back and settled between her legs, reached behind her and undid her bra with a skilled pinch, and grinned. She rolled her eyes and laughed, but stopped as he kissed her nipple, took it between his teeth and sucked. One hand trailed down to trace the lines of her hip, her belly, her thigh, while the other hand found one of hers, and he tangled their fingers together, connecting them so tenderly that, again, she was reminded of Randall. She often was. Freddie was as excitable, as hopeful, as naive, as kind, as clever, as beautiful, as Randall had been back then, before it all. Of course that was why she was drawn to him, but sometimes they were so different, and now she could compare them side by side, the differences were especially obvious. Even now, after all that had happened Freddie did not need to undo and redo her buttons five times. Freddie could never have worked in a warzone like Randall had – he would have wanted to help everyone. But Randall did not have the same charm that helped Freddie win information from people – if he had, he would have been unstoppable. As Freddie’s fingers slipped inside her knickers, she could feel the difference in their hands. Freddie’s fingers were longer, thinner than Randall’s, but Randall’s were rougher, and she missed that, now, as they brushed over her, curling against her, drawing a sigh from her. “Lix, please.” Her eyes flicked open and she looked at him questioningly. “Stop thinking.”

She reached for him, drawing him up so that she could kiss him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and gasped as he shifted in such a way that pressed his fingers against her, before tugging her knickers decisively down her legs. “Force of habit, I’m afraid,” she managed to say, and he chuckled as he twisted his hand, sliding one finger inside of her, then another, crooking them, shifting to give himself a better angle, his eyes fixed so intently on hers that she found herself trying not to blink, whispering to him in languages she thought she had forgotten. She tensed and arched as she came, but never broke eye contact, not even as he wriggled and settled between her thighs, pressing against her. “You, beautiful boy, are going to be the death of me.”

“Well,” he drawled, his breath against her sending waves of pleasure and anticipation through her, “the French call it la petite mort for a reason.” He laughed at his own joke, then finally – and it felt like she had waited forever – he slid into her. It took all her strength not to tangle her free hand – the other was still linked with his, lying on her belly, knuckles turning white – into his hair, to instead brace it against the wall, stopping herself from twisting or bucking and hurting him. Afterwards, he held himself up on one arm and look down at her, breathing heavily, looking down at her. Again, she was struck by how different it was from before. Then, he had touched her like he was afraid of tainting her, like he thought she might break, like – and this was worst of all, even though she expected it, knew it to be true, or perhaps that was why it was so awful – he wished she were someone else. But now, he looked at her, touched her, like he could not believe his luck, and he absolutely did not wish she were someone else. She smiled, kissed him gently, and reached for her cigarettes, lighting one right under his nose. “Lix Storm,” he growled, “you a cruel woman.”

She exhaled, leant over to tap away the ash and pressed herself up against him. “Like I said, it’s up to you, beautiful boy,” she purred, arching one eyebrow in that way that she had. 

Freddie rolled off of her and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, and grinned as she settled into the crook of his arm, curling catlike against him and sighing happily. “You know,” he said conversationally, “it’s a good job you don’t do breakfast. I don’t have a bloody thing in.”

Lix laughed so hard that she choked on her cigarette.


End file.
